


Shallow Waters

by cannedsunlight



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alive Cole Anderson, Ambiguous Relationships, Fisherman Hank, M/M, Mentioned Cole Anderson, MerMay, Merman Connor, POV Hank Anderson, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24107947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cannedsunlight/pseuds/cannedsunlight
Summary: “What am I doing here, Connor”, he asks, sounds like an old man being swept empty by something bigger than him. Something constant, divine. The rush of water crashing in from outside because he can't keep the door closed anymore. Like he's seen something that makes him question nearly everything, makes him want to hand it all right over. Like he has no right to have it. To ever have had it, maybe.Connor blinks. He's there, now. Right there, attentive. A little worried maybe.What do you mean, Hank?“Feels like I shouldn't be here.”Connor considers this. “You've been a fisherman for thirty years, Hank. I'd think the sea doesn't scare you much.”It scares me every day.“No, I mean.” Hank self-consciously rubs the back of his neck, grimaces. He's not good at this. Just drag me back in with you so I can forget this. But it's not a dream, I can't shrug it off in the morning. I take it to bed with me every goddamn night. “With you. Here with you, I mean.”
Relationships: Hank Anderson/Connor
Comments: 1
Kudos: 24





	Shallow Waters

**Author's Note:**

> A tale of the tide.
> 
> Inspired by this magnificent piece of art:  
> https://twitter.com/_muffinshark_/status/1192987399858610176  
> ( Fancy embed later. )

It's quiet, today.  
He drags himself across the sand, well onto the beach, the lick of sand - just past the rushing, foaming of the waters - close enough, within an arm's length, it's a distance that can be closed, but still outside of it, and if it is as much of an effort or a struggle as he imagines it to be, as it could and maybe should easily be, he doesn't show it.  
Connor drags himself there, to a spot next to where Hank's standing, all yellow rubber and weathered, old, and sits down quietly.  
Hank looks at him, then.  
Connor's all freckled skin, glimmering scales, wet, sleek, long and slender. Deft. Otherworldly. Not stranded, not caught. Something rises in his throat, too firmly lodged to be swallowed past or back down even. He feels strangely disconnected from it all, from this, and everything else.  
It scares him. Helplessly digs the tip of his boot into the sand a little.  
Connor's looking straight ahead, some spot far away, far back against the streak of sun atop the horizon, although - Hank supposes - he might actually be more interested in the specks of it glistening in and on the waves. They're tame today, the waves.  
And then, suddenly - and it's not as absurd as it could or should be in order to be able to rub it out of the inner corners of his eyes like a dream in the morning - Connor's looking up at him.  
There's recognition in those eyes, but for a moment - he can't swallow past it - he drags with it the same faraway adoration he's given the sea just now, personal and overwhelmingly immediate. Hank's taken aback by it. It doesn't look - doesn't feel like it's meant for him, like it should be meant for him, he can't imagine being in the same moment as the rest of Connor's life, and he wonders, wildly, if Connor's more of a fish or more of a person in there, really, in the depths, if he'd want to drag him out if he saw him or if he'd watch him the way Connor watches him. If he ever jumps out and back in like a dolphin, splashing arches.  
Can't wrap his head around the possibility of sharing that moment with him. Feels like he's intruding something, a bystander. He knows he isn't. That's what makes this difficult.  
“What am I doing here, Connor”, he asks, sounds like an old man being swept empty by something bigger than him. Something constant, divine. The rush of water crashing in from outside because he can't keep the door closed anymore. Like he's seen something that makes him question nearly everything, makes him want to hand it all right over. Like he has no right to have it. To ever have had it, maybe.  
Connor blinks. He's there, now. Right there, attentive. A little worried maybe. _What do you mean, Hank?_  
“Feels like I shouldn't be here.”  
Connor considers this. “You've been a fisherman for thirty years, Hank. I'd think the sea doesn't scare you much.”  
_It scares me every day._  
“No, I mean.” Hank self-consciously rubs the back of his neck, grimaces. He's not good at this. Just drag me back in with you so I can forget this. But it's not a dream, I can't shrug it off in the morning. I take it to bed with me every goddamn night. “With you. Here with you, I mean.”  
“Oh”, Connor says, and averts his gaze, almost guiltily.  
Hank sighs. _Can't even blame you for that._  
“Would you?”  
Oh, he's said this out loud. Fumbles, now. He doesn't know how to answer this in a way that doesn't make him look like a fumbling idiot.  
“Good”, Connor says, by his side. “My choices are not for you to feel guilty about. Just like it's not my place to feel guilty about yours.”  
“Not sure I agree with that, Connor.”  
His skin seems to dry; his scales look like they don't. They're still just as smooth and bright, shimmering silver. The tips of his fin idly move around, curl. It wags back and forth slowly, the fin. Toes curling, uncurling in the sand would he have any.  
“No, Hank.” More person, Hank decides. More person. He'd want him to swim up to him, right up all the way, rise out of the water far enough to lean onto the wood, port side, leaning, resting, joining him half half. Far enough out to meet his hands, his face. You're the siren for a helpless old man like me.  
“I need to face my own decisions and so do you. Face yours.”  
Hank chokes up. Rooted to the spot, can't feel his body past a nauseating tingling. What is he doing here, what's happening.  
A moment passes, then two.  
“Both of us choose to be here.” Connor's voice reaches his ears through some kind of fog, distant.  
Roaring in his ears, spots in his vision. A sudden spot of warmth on his back - a hand.  
“Breathe, Hank.” How'd he reach his back? He can't stand on his - but then, oh, he's on the ground, must've sat down, needs to - Needs to get some ground under him. Feels like he could just lean sideways right into the sand, clammy and gritty, so the waves don't take him. Feels like he could realistically ask the ground not to leave him like this.  
“I can't.” His voice is strangled somehow. Hoarse. An odd mix of sad and apologetic.  
“You have to.” The hand lingers for another moment, then leaves. No, don't. Don't leave. But Hank can't bring himself to reach out, grab it, put it back, couldn't possibly do that. He'd probably miss anyway, out of it as he is right now. Can't even tell where his own hands are, feels like it wouldn't surprise him much when he finds them and sees that he has more than two or none at all because he's been swept into the crevices of someone else.  
He might be laughed at if he'd try. He won't be laughed at, Connor never does; terribly patient and unforgiving as he is. Hank feels pretty stripped blank and exposed and he understands that this is because of Connor, because Connor makes him look at himself differently. Wants him to. Opens up a space where he must confront himself, and it hurts. Take my hands, please. So I can feel them.  
“Sit up when you can”, Connor says. “I'd like to show you something.”  
Okay. There's sand in his clothes, in the folds and creases. Itches like hell. Hank realizes then that he's been uselessly lying on the beach for a good few minutes. Doesn't know when exactly, but he does sit up. The sun's lower than it was before.  
Connor welcomes him back, smiles at him. Hank catches sight of his tail: it's wet again, definitely wet, he must've been back in the water, briefly, at some point during his little episode.  
“Sorry”, he says, “Sorry.”  
“Don't be. It's okay.”  
“Cole talks a lot about you, you know”, Hank hears himself blurting out. Another piece of his life he places down in the sand between the two of them. That's okay, he thinks.  
Connor smiles; again, or still, a previous smile widening. “You can tell him that I think about him, too, a lot.”  
“Yeah.” He's still taller than Connor, even when sitting. He realizes that he doesn't like sitting here, he'd rather sit on a boat, far out, with a rope and his son. It doesn't feel like something he'd usually do. Something in his chest, a pain that he'd rather not name or locate, and he knows he's going to continue.  
“Talks about you a whole lot. He wants ya to eat breakfast with us sometimes. During breakfast, he says these things.”  
“I'd like to join you, Hank. Eat breakfast with you. What does he like? To eat, I mean?”  
Involuntarily, Hank has to smile. Starts talking and doesn't stop talking for a long while. Talks about how he likes bread, buttered bread with a ridiculous amount of strawberry jam on top. How he carves faces into them sometimes instead of eating, how he can easily down four glasses of chocolate milk in one go without a single regret, can you imagine? How he'd offer Connor his bed and sleep in the bathtub instead if that means that he can stay, and how - no - it should be the other way around.  
They both fall silent afterwards. It's a different kind of silence.  
They both know they can't have it, Connor can't go further than this, not for long.  
The future is uncertain and the present is a strange kind of warm.  
It's a different kind of silence.  
The waves are tame, today.  
And Hank thinks: maybe they could go out with the boat again, later. Catch some fish.  
Try to catch something that can't be catched.


End file.
